Recently in Performances

It might seem churlish to complain about the BBC Proms coverage of Pierre
Boulez’s 90th anniversary. After all, there are a few performances
dotted around — although some seem rather oddly programmed, as if embarrassed
at the presence of new or newish music. (That could certainly not be claimed in
the present case.)

I recently spent four days in St. Petersburg, timed to coincide with the
annual Stars of the White Nights Festival. Yet the most memorable singing I
heard was neither at the Mariinsky Theater nor any other performance hall. It
was in the small, nearly empty church built for the last Tsar, Nicholas II, at
Tsarskoye Selo.

As I walked up Exhibition Road on my way to the Royal Albert Hall, I passed a busking tuba player whose fairground ditties were enlivened by bursts of flame which shot skyward from the bell of his instrument, to the amusement and bemusement of a rapidly gathering pavement audience.

‘Here, thanks be to God, my opera is praised to the skies and there is nothing in it which does not please greatly.’ So wrote Antonio Vivaldi to Marchese Guido Bentivoglio d’Aragona in Ferrara in 1737.

When he was skilfully negotiating the not inconsiderable complexities,
upheavals and strife of musical and religious life at the English royal court
during the Reformation, Thomas Tallis (c.1505-85) could hardly have imagined
that more than 450 years later people would be queuing round the block for the
opportunity spend their lunch-hour listening to the music that he composed in
service of his God and his monarch.

Two of the important late twentieth century stage directors, Robert Carsen and Peter Sellars, returned to the Aix Festival this summer. Carsen’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a masterpiece, Sellars’ strange Tchaikovsky/Stravinsky double bill is simply bizarre.

Plus an evening by the superb Modigliani Quartet that complimented the brief (55 minutes) a cappella opera for six female voices Svadba (2013) by Serbian composer Ana Sokolovic (b. 1968). She lives in Canada.

With its revelatory production of Rappaccini’s Daughter performed outdoors in the city’s refurbished Botanical Gardens, Des Moines Metro Opera has unlocked the gate to a mysterious, challenging landscape of musical delights.

Even by Shakespeare’s standards A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of his earlier plays, boasts a particularly fantastical plot involving a bunch of aristocrats (the Athenian Court of Theseus), feuding gods and goddesses (Oberon and Titania), ‘Rude Mechanicals’ (Bottom, Quince et al) and assorted faeries and spirits (such as Puck).

What do we call Tristan und Isolde? That may seem a silly question.
Tristan und Isolde, surely, and Tristan for short, although
already we come to the exquisite difficulty, as Tristan and Isolde themselves partly seem (though do they only seem?) to recognise of that celebrated ‘und’.

So this was it, the Pelléas which had apparently repelled critics and other members of the audience on the opening night. Perhaps that had been exaggeration; I avoided reading anything substantive — and still have yet to do so.

From David Zinn’s fantastic sets to the gender-bending
casting to the non sequitur romp through human emotion with every new scene, the production
was a delight to behold, though I fear that the novelty of combining two counter tenors and a
pants role trumped all else that was wonderful.

Flavio is characteristic of full-length Handel opera, deftly combining the tragic and comic as
Mozart and Rossini would later do. An on-stage death and subsequent lament is followed
immediately by a comic scene involving a love triangle, which is in turn followed by a scene in
which one of our heroes pleads with his love to kill him. There is always danger that such manic
drama will jar the senses a bit too much, but Flavio is one of the more subtle examples in
Handel’s oeuvre.

The potpourri was emphasized by Zinn’s colorful sets and costumes. Fanciful greens, pinks,
yellows, and blues combined to embolden the incongruities of the work. One of the most
prominent sets was a high grassy hedge, on which hung lamps belonging inside. The hedge
functioned alternately as garden and throne room, leaving the audience to incorporate grass in the
royal chamber and fancy lighting in the great outdoors. The costuming was equally as creative; at
one point Theodata, played by Kathryn Allyn, donned the baroque version of a French maid
costume.

Make no mistake, however, the night belonged to the performers, especially the high-pitched
male heroes of the story. Two lead roles in this opera were written for castrati, with a third pants
role to boot. While revered and sexually desired in their day, the operation involved in creating
the castrato voice has since understandably fallen out of favor. So we have counter tenors
instead. City Opera conveyed to the audience the import of having two men sing their falsetto out
in the six-page preparatory essay in the program booklet. The article explicated the history of
castrati and the modern rise of the counter tenor, which author Marion Lignana Rosenberg links
to the contemporary early music revival. Rosenberg also mentions the gender issues inherent
when men sing in traditionally female registers, likening the operatic trend to the popularity of
high-pitched male crooners in pop music.

Indeed, although the counter tenor voice is both aesthetically beautiful and fascinating from the
perspective of the historian, gender issues were key in the audience’s reception of Flavio. And
how could they not be? In this city, in this business, at a critical time in the gay rights movement,
it is natural and healthy that an opera with two fabulous men playing the studly heroes and a
woman as the third-most-testosterone-filled character comes to the fore. And so it was that the
audience’s awareness of these issues was palpable. There was dead silence, the likes of which
I’ve hardly experienced, during the first counter tenor aria of the evening (ably sung by Gerald
Thompson), and later giggles as Emilia, Guido’s love interest, sang “when it comes to odd
lovers” (these among a slew of further examples I could note).

If members of the audience did tear their minds from such novelty, they heard a sound and
capable cast. David Walker was returning to the title role, and he handled the mood changes
deftly all the while singing a massive range of notes. Gerald Thompson as Guido filled the other
counter tenor role. His voice was more developed although his acting left much to be desired.
Katherine Rohrer played Vitige, Flavio’s servant who outwits his (or her?) master to get the girl
in the end, a power play redolent of later Mozart and Rossini. Ms. Rohrer has a sweet and clear
voice and first-rate comedic timing. Kathryn Allyn’s deep mezzo was well served in the role of
Theodata, and Marguerite Krull sang beautifully as Emilia, especially in the lament. Indeed, Ms.
Krull proved to be the most adept Handel interpreter of the bunch with her florid, effortless
cadenzas. Notable too was the period orchestra, lead by William Lacey on the harpsichord. Their
ensemble skills and obvious diligent work at authenticity were admirable.

In all, the New York City Opera’s production of Flavio was at once delightfully whimsical and
timely. All elements pulled together to create a wonderfully incongruous whole. May we see
many more such gender-bending productions in the future!